Belief-Driven Software Product Line Development and Evolution

The planning, realization, and release of a Software Product Line (SPL) are driven by features. Therefore, many high-level decisions about the evolution of an SPL are made at the feature level. However, a feature can involve many stakeholders with different expertise, and taking their opinions into account to make the right decisions is not trivial. In this paper, we propose using belief uncertainty in conjunction with feature models to assist in the evolution of SPLs by explicitly quantifying opinions. We outline three evolution scenarios in which subjective logic can be used to represent the opinions of stakeholders and explain in detail how to use subjective logic to make decisions in the context of the next release problem. We illustrate our ideas with a Smartwatch SPL. Finally, we discuss different ways of combining the opinions of stakeholders depending on the situation, the goals and the risks that can be assumed.